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The AAVMC’s VEC Symposium Sharpens Skills, Celebrates Teaching

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10, 2014 – About 180
veterinary medical faculty members and related stakeholders attended the
AAVMC’s Veterinary Educator Collaborative (VEC) Symposium in June at Iowa State
University. The event, designed to foster teaching excellence in academic
veterinary medicine, provides an opportunity to get ideas for improved teaching
and learn about how to deal with practical challenges, such as conducting
communications assessment on a budget or running effective medical rounds.
Expert instructors and educational specialists make presentations on what works
and why.

Three tracks–Inter-program Collaboration, Teaching and
Learning, and Innovation in Teaching–featured almost 35 individual
presentations centered on topics such as new applications of teaching practices
and technology, teaching basic sciences in a clinical context, and how to align
clinical teaching and the client experience to create practice-ready
veterinarians.

“The VEC is focused on creating teaching excellence,” said
AAVMC Executive Director Dr. Andrew Maccabe. “When you consider the enormous
popularity of this program among veterinary educators, I think it makes a very
positive statement about the future.”

In addition to publishing articles in prestigious journals,
such as Science and Psychological Review, Ericsson’s ideas on how
to achieve expertise have been recently featured in books such as Malcolm
Gladwell’s “Outliers” and Geoffrey Colvin’s “Talent is Overrated.”

Participants also toured the new Iowa State University
College of Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital as part of the conference, and
became eligible to receive 36 hours of continuing education credits, as
approved by the AAVSB RACE program.

“The VEC symposium provides a wonderful opportunity for
veterinary medical educators from around the world to share best teaching and
assessment practices, innovative educational initiatives, and fascinating
research," said Dr. Jared Danielson, assistant professor in the College of
Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University, who organized the symposium.
"I always come away from VEC meetings better informed, motivated, and
encouraged about the future of veterinary medical education."

The AAVMC’s VEC provides online and face-to-face
collaboration and sharing between veterinary medical educators. VEC focuses on
planning, faculty development, and sharing best practices. Participants
exchange ideas, learn from each other, and generate new ideas in the context of
an ongoing collaborative exchange.

The Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges
(AAVMC) is a nonprofit membership organization working to protect and improve
the health and welfare of animals, people and the environment by advancing
academic veterinary medicine. Its members include 35 veterinary medical
colleges in the United States and Canada, nine departments of veterinary
science, eight departments of comparative medicine, thirteen international
colleges of veterinary medicine, and six affiliate colleges of veterinary
medicine: www.aavmc.org